Category Archives: Uncategorized

The customer next to you in the queue looks innocent enough. But instead of a shopping list, you notice she’s carrying handwritten notes about the appearance and cleanliness of the store. She’s been timing the progression of the queue on her phone … and is that a tiny camera lens peeking out from her purse? There’s no trenchcoat in sight, but odds are, you’ve just spotted a mystery shopper.

There are approximately 50,000 mystery shopping trips carried out every month in the UK, according to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), and as more and more spending takes place online, the demand for mystery shoppers is growing. “Retailers are becoming increasingly aware that shoppers who are prepared to set foot in a physical store want a service and an experience they can’t get online,” says Simon Boydell, spokesman for Marketforce, which has more than 300,000 mystery shoppers on its books. “Our clients want to measure how well their stores are delivering on that experience.”

Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, the Post Office and Metro Bank all use mystery shopping company ABa to score their stores, which then helps to determine staff bonuses and identify any training issues. “We assign different store locations to each shopper and rotate them so that they never go back to the same shop within three months,” says ABa spokeswoman Jill Spencer. “Each day, they typically spend up to eight hours visiting five to 10 stores, plus another hour or two filing detailed reports on every aspect of their visit.” For that, the mystery shoppers can earn up to £155 a day. They are also reimbursed for their petrol and hotel stays, and compensated for their car depreciation (the shoppers can be expected to drive as many as 20,000 miles a year). Meanwhile, video mystery shoppers, who film their visits with a hidden camera planted in a buttonhole or handbag, can earn even more – around £300 a day.

Shoppers are usually repaid any money they spend in the stores, and may also be allowed to keep the products they buy. “I’m typically given between £5 and £20 to spend at each store, to assess the service I receive at the till,” says Laura, a 50-year old mystery shopper from Devon, who has been paid to visit around 7,000 shops since 2001. The purchase usually has to be related to a service or a type of product that the retailer wants her to check. “I’m always given a scenario, such as buying something from a specific department or a new product range, but within that framework, I can often buy whatever I want – and keep it.”

Like most full-time mystery shoppers, Laura is self-employed, taking jobs from ABa and other mystery shopping companies as and when they come up. Her income is typically £30,000 to £40,000 a year, and that doesn’t include all the freebies she gets on the job. “With the perks, it’s enough to live on. But I don’t do it because I love shopping. In fact, I hate shopping now. When I’m not working, it pains me to have to go out and buy a pint of milk.”

Is that a grocery list or notes on her shopping experience? Photograph: Paul Burns/Getty Images

She does, however, find it satisfying to return to a store she has previously mystery shopped and see standards have improved. “I know it must be because of my feedback or why would they pay me to give it? Some of the retailers I shop at win awards for customer service, and I think that is down to us mystery shoppers. I feel I’m not just doing a service for my company, I’m doing a service for all shoppers everywhere.”
Sadly, regular mystery shopping assignments that pay like Laura’s are few and far between. In fact, competition is so fierce, she keeps her job a closely guarded secret and even her friends and family don’t know who she works for (Laura is not her real name).

It’s estimated that more than 500,000 people have registered as mystery shoppers in the UK, but just 10% or fewer manage to get regular work each month and this has led to a dramatic reduction in compensation. “Where once you got a fee, reimbursement for your purchase and mileage, you now often just receive a contribution towards a purchase,” say Val, a 51-year-old former mystery shopper. “I worked for 40 different mystery shopping companies for almost 20 years but I gave up entirely three years ago because I had bills to pay and very few assignments paid what I considered to be an acceptable rate.”

Nowadays, mystery shopping companies mostly rely on the promise of freebies to incentivise their workers. “Marketforce shoppers typically get a couple of pounds for a visit as a token gesture for their time and effort,” says Boydell. “At the most, we’ll pay £15 to £25 plus reimbursement for say, a meal for two or a hotel stay. We don’t directly employ any shoppers so we don’t have to pay them the minimum wage.”

Shoppers for Marketforce do not receive any recompense for their travel and, on average, get just £5 to £15 to spend during each visit, but Boydell argues the shoppers are deliberately chosen because they would be visiting those shops anyway or “are happy not being paid”. For example, no fee is offered for all-inclusive trips to five-star hotels abroad, yet these jobs are usually snapped up “within 10 minutes or less” of being advertised online.

“I’d go on a cruise for nothing,” says Laura. “But I think mystery shopping companies that pay you a nominal fee to travel to a restaurant and eat a meal are exploiting people. I won’t touch those jobs anymore.” There are plenty of people, however, that would. Hannah, a 41-year-old City lawyer, has conducted nearly 500 visits for the Mystery Dining Company in her spare time without receiving remuneration or travel expensesAs a prestigious “platinum diner”, she is regularly hand-picked by the Mystery Dining Company to carry out their most exclusive assignments, enjoying £200 meals at Michelin-starred Mayfair restaurants, five-star hospitality at Ascot and overnight stays at boutique hotels.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch – even if you work for a mystery dining company. Hannah says she typically spends two to four hours after each visit writing detailed reports on everything from the quality of the food to specific interactions with staff, whom she always needs to be able to name or “subtly” describe. Trickiest of all, she must memorise all these details while eating her meal – unable, of course, to openly write anything down.

“There’s lots to remember, and sometimes it can detract from the experience. You’re expected to give feedback while it’s fresh, so I’ve had to get up at 5am to write a report before work. It’s a challenging thing to do; you need to be focused, articulate and detail-orientated.”

Yet to some, mystery shopping is so attractive that “a few hundred people” every week are willing to spend up to two and a half hours filling in surveys at ukmysteryshopper.co.uk, just to be in with a chance of effectively winning a £100 mystery shop. “We make money when we sign people up via our surveys, we don’t work for any brand we mystery shop,” says spokeswoman Amy Mills. Within the surveys, she admits “there may be questions that if you select yes, you’ll get text messages and there may be a charge for those messages”. Would-be shoppers need to read the terms and conditions of each of the 15 10-minute surveys they are asked to complete, she says, adding that just five of those who have taken part will be selected “at random” each week to receive a £100 voucher. Their reports are then published online, apparently with their name or photo.

The MSPA warns that the industry is rife with highly organised scams. For example, emails or calls asking for money upfront may purport to be from legitimate mystery shopping companies whose entire websites have been copied to lure in unsuspecting victims. “Never pay a fee to register for work. A genuine mystery shopping company would never ask you to,” says Adam Kaye, MD of mystery shopping company GAPbuster Worldwide. “There are unscrupulous people out there who promise significant sums of money if a shopper pays to join, but even the most prolific mystery shoppers aren’t exactly millionaires. The reality is: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”

Working as a mystery shopper

• If you are unsure about the authenticity of a company, check whether it is a vetted member of the MPSA at www.mspa-eu.org.

• Stay on the right side of the taxman: “It is unlikely that there will be a taxable profit if the mystery shopper is simply reimbursed for the cost of meals they are required to eat to fulfil their assignments,” says a spokesperson HMRC. “Profits will arise, however, if any assignments involve a fee or if the mystery shopper is reimbursed for the cost of goods which they are allowed to keep. In which case the tax charge will be based on the value of those goods.”

Insights, or consumer insights, are one of the key building blocks for a company to generate ideas for new products or new services.

Insights, or consumer insights, are critical to the innovation process. They are statements that capture a clear and deep understanding of a consumer’s attitudes and emotions, and they are one of the key building blocks for a company to generate ideas for new products or new services.

Insights Defined

“Insights are short statements based on a deep understanding of consumer attitudes and beliefs.”

“Insights are unknown or overlooked knowledge about consumer behaviour and attitudes.”

“Good insights are short statements that reflect a deep and clear understanding about consumers using words that a consumer would use.”

“A great insight is a “deep discovery” about our consumer that can be leveraged to change behaviour or to grow a business.”

“Good insights help to establish a connection between brands and consumers in fresh new ways.”

1. Know what you are looking for – understand and be clear what insights are and what they are not. Use and agree on good examples with support from market research professionals.

2. Define the focus for “insight mining” – decide what you are looking for and agree the areas of strategic interest and focus e.g. attitudes of 18-34 year olds to sun protection when they are on their beach holiday.

3. Get help from market research professionals – this doesn’t mean that you can’t look for insights yourself, but use professionals to guide and help you.

5. Get closer to your consumers – meet them and get close to your target audience; observe and understand the choices that they are making and not making. Try not to hide behind focus group mirrors!

6. Read between the lines – you are probably sitting on lots of insights from old market research reports. Read them again and read between the lines and ask why why why? Challenge and come up with your own theories that you can then test and explore.

7. Look below the surface – avoid taking the first answer you hear from a consumer as gospel. There are often big differences between what people say and what they actually do. Try and dig deeper and understand why a consumer makes the choices they do.

8. Explore the differences – look for differences and contradictions between one research report and another. Explore differences between different consumer behaviors. Have a challenging and questioning mind on your insight journey.

9. Look for quantity – once you get started, brainstorm potential new insights in a specific area and don’t judge your efforts too quickly…our experience indicates that you need to generate and write 20 potential insights to produce 2 or 3 that are really meaningful.

10. Keep discovering – finding insights doesn’t stop, so keep looking. Have a regular program in place to find new insights and give yourself time at the start of the innovation cycle to do this work. Consider using online tools to help capture and database new insights on a regular basis.

Improved internet access, increased bandwidths and new Web 2.0 technologies have laid the foundation for “Smart Companies” to conduct more and more of their innovation research online.

Do online methods for generating innovative ideas really work? What tactics can a company employ to ensure that employees become fully engaged in an online innovation process?

Improved internet access, increased bandwidths and new Web 2.0 technologies have laid the foundation for “Smart Companies” to conduct more and more of their innovation research online. Leading companies are using these new technologies to involve a much broader base of employees in their innovation activities, rather than limiting such activity to a small, marketing function. This approach can maximise the creative talents of a much larger team and bring to life one of the winning philosophies captured in Karl Albrecht’s book, “The Power of Minds at Work”.

There are also significant cost and environmental advantages of using online or “on-phone” methods compared with more traditional approaches: flying people into one location has become increasingly expensive, time-consuming and environmentally unsound.

However, do online methods really work in practice and what tactics can a company employ to ensure that employees become fully engaged in an online innovation process?

Do Online Methods Work?

Ideas First® has been using online tools to support early innovation work for the past eight years. This includes the use of survey tools, to get broader consumer and internal feedback to early insights and ideas, combined with the launch of a new brainstorming tool called the virtualHOTHOUSE®. Our results with large companies clearly demonstrate that new tools can enhance the outcomes and effectiveness of innovation projects, helping to reduce time delays, reduce travel cost and, most importantly, enhancing the final quality of ideas and insights.

There is one important caveat however, and that is that the new tools themselves do not guarantee success, they are simply enablers. To achieve good results, a large company will still need to follow the fundamental rules for innovation success.

Online Brainstorming – Ten Ways to Win

Define the creative focus
As with traditional insight or idea generation, it is important that an innovation team takes time to define the creative focus for online activity. Once defined, creativity and innovation can then flow in the right direction.

Leadership and clear communication
Based on experience from the last 30 online events, the most successful projects are the ones with the support and commitment from senior levels of management. These leaders normally lead the initial event communication, outlining the objectives and highlighting the importance of the project.

Block quality time
Give people the right amount of time at different stages of the process, and encourage delegates to block quality time, especially for idea and insight sharing activities.

Involve consumers
Even though an event is run online, encourage delegates to engage with consumers during the process to help in the generation of new insights or to refine leading ideas.

Provide team with good stimulus and training materials
For example, leading insights; stimulus from R&D teams, old ideas from previous projects and different out of the box games etc. It is very important that this information is tailored to each of the agreed Innovation Pillars.

Select strong team leaders
The virtualHOTHOUSE® tool allows groups of individuals to work in smaller teams. To achieve success, it is important that strong leaders are appointed to each team to set an example to others and to encourage other delegates to take part throughout the process.

Encourage small team working
A big benefit of new, online tools is that they can allow individuals to take part in innovation tasks at a time that is more convenient to them, or when they are at their most creative. However, while individual working is productive, it can also be beneficial to encourage individuals to work locally in “mini-teams”.

Have good individual incentives
If the project is important, set up good incentives to encourage individual contributions. The virtualHOTHOUSE® tool is able to track the contributions of all delegates from the start to the end of the process, making it easy to identify the individual or mini-teams responsible for the winning insights or ideas.

Consider using external creative agents and copy writers
To broaden thinking, it may be appropriate to involve external agents or creative consumers to introduce alternative ideas and insights. In addition, using external copywriters can help to refine leading insights and ideas in a clear and objective way, ahead of final online evaluation.

Communicate the winners
Even without cash incentives, many people simply like to have their efforts acknowledged. Ensure that the winners’ names are published in bright lightsDo online methods for generating innovative ideas really work? What tactics can a company employ to ensure that employees become fully engaged in an online innovation process?This content was originally published by Ideas First . Visit their website at http://www.ideasfirst.net/what-we-do/.